940GML D520 and Ram.

I got thinking...


I have a D520 with the 940GML Board. Intel says, Dual-channel DDR2 533MHz Memory Support Up to 10.7 GB/s of bandwidth and up to 2GB memory addressability, for faster system responsiveness.

Why am i able to use 3.0GB of ram, if this board is a 940GML, Yet i can not upgrade the CPU to anything good?(Waiting for Pentium Dual Core to test Now..) The BIOS also reads all 3gb's, as 533, It is 667 speed ram tho.. Both sticks are 667 speed.. So the MB must be clocking the speed back.





Thanks for reading my not so important questions, lol.

 

Can't help you with the CPU, but often, the total RAM limits are off simply because at the time the chipset was developed, the largest SODIMM available was only 1 GB, which means that if you had 2 of them, you would have 2 GB total. The hardware can support more, it's just that they hadn't "planned ahead", as it were. Yes, the fact that your memory runs only at 533 MHz is almost certainly a limitation of the chipset as well.

 

I have a Intel i945PM with a dedicated ATI Mobility Radeon X1600.




My mainboard limits the usable ram to 3,37 GB of 4 GB.
But its because Intel made it to do that. xD

 

Guys I have been thinking about this for the last month.. im getting 2 different answers on this system... The BIOS, Windows, CPUID, and a couple of other programs read it is 3GB.

Yet Others such as the Task Manager, and Gadget read it is 2GB.

Attached is what i am talking about... What should i do? thanks!!

 

You're getting these conflicting numbers because you're asking the chipset to do more than what it's rated to do. It's like overclocking in a way; you're not guaranteed to get "proper" performance out of the thing if you run it outside of the stock specifications.

There's probably nothing you can do about it.

 

I had a 940gml board in one of my old acer notebooks. When I upgraded to a C2D T5500 it also clocked my memory the same as the FSB of the processor, which is 667mhz. The Celeron m440 it had in it to begin with was holding the RAM back so to speak. Another thing to note is that the official Intel documents say that the i940gml and i943gml don't support the C2D, but they do, although that is ultimately left up to your manufacturer to update the BIOS with compatibility information on new processors. But I know for a fact that the board supports a maximum of 4GB because that's what was in mine before I gave it to my mother last year.

 

like XGX2007 has said, the CPU's FSB is 533Mhz(4x133) and so the RAM is being clocked at 533Mhz(2x266).

 

Actually it's because you're not running a 64-bit operating system. Your reported memory capacity is 3.37 because that's all x86 Windows can address. I believe there is a mod or registry change that you can do to 32-bit Windows for it to see all 4GB but it still won't be able to use it.

 

In this case, it is actually the 945PM/GM's memory controller that is 32-bit.

 

Oh, ok.. I stand corrected. I guess the one I gave my mother only reports 3.37.. hmm.. never really noticed it I guess.

 

So is that extra gig of ram just setting there and not being used?

Should i remove it? Would i get a performance increase?

XGX2007 I tried to upgrade to a couple of different dual core and dual core duo's and they did not work, even with the latest Bios...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=440444&highlight=D520+cpu+upgrade

you must of had the 943GML or better, because the 940GML only does 533MHz, 2GB of ram, and only a core solo will work in it...

 

If Windows isn't recognizing that extra GB of memory, it probably isn't getting used. It probably doesn't matter if you remove it or not; you're not going to see an increase in performance either way.

On that note, just because Dell's implementation of the 940 doesn't support anything dual-core doesn't mean that all manufacturers' implementations won't as well. I do also recall threads about people upgrading 940-based Acers, etc, to PD-Cs and beyond.

 

So you are telling me it DELL that puts these limits on this motherboard?

If you had a 940GML in say that Acer, you could have 3GB of 667 Ram, and a nice Pentium Dual Core?? :cry:

 

I wouldn't say that they necessarily intentionally limit these things on their boards (though I really don't know much more about this - maybe they do?); it's just that the way Dell does their BIOS, hardware, whatever, only allows the 940 to run at its stock specifications.

It's like AMD Phenom boards that do or don't allow you to unlock the 3rd/4th core. And then again, the quality of each individual 940 varies; it's possible (though unlikely) that a 940 in a different D520 will accept a PD-C or higher even if yours doesn't. For running things out of spec like this, you're never going to be sure.

 

Thank you for the reply. CW.

So im not going to worry about it at this point in time... There is nothing i can do about it.

 

lol u are wasting a lot of time with that old laptop... save ur time and cash and get a new laptop or keep this as it is and get a new laptop.